I had to change this one up a bit. Just a bit. Everything within me said that the onion and garlic needed sauteed with a bit of olive oil before dumping it all in the slow cooker. I don’t know if this made a difference or not. If you’re in a hurry, just do what she says. I’m {pretty} sure you’ll like it.

Also, I don’t buy crushed tomatoes. I buy diced. So once the garlic and onion were ready, I threw it all (diced tomatoes, onion, garlic) in the blender and let it puree until it looked like crushed tomatoes. This made my oldest son very happy. He hates hunks of onions. He hates hunks of anything, actually.

This was my first ever attempt at homemade crackers. We eat crackers frequently with our lunches, and I haven’t really found any on that market that make my heart go pitter-patter. They usually have some kind of funky oil or preservative in them. Most crackers have multiple offenders.

My sons both liked this recipe. And while I liked them, I was a bit miffed that they are called “Wheat Thins.” Don’t be deceived. They are good crackers, but they aren’t Wheat Thins.

Since rolling dough 1/16th inch thick isn’t my super power, I used a pasta rolling machine to get the job done.

It takes a bit to get the crackers cut up. I think I’m going to teach my older son how to do this and let him become the official cracker maker for our family, or I might just keep searching for an easier recipe. My favorite thing about these is the price . . . probably about .70/batch (9 ounces).

I’ve made these twice. So far, so good.

The Bad

We’ll probably skip this category each month and go straight for ugly. It’s usually one extreme or the other.

The Ugly

I found this “homemade condensed cream of chicken soup” recipe on Pinterest. I decided I would try to make a broccoli-rice-cheese casserole with this homemade cream soup replacement. I made this decision before ever trying the homemade condensed cream of chicken soup recipe. Hmm . . .

It tasted like hot flour soup. If that sounds appetizing to you, I don’t think we can be friends.

Once I sampled the hot-flour-soup, I had a fleeting thought — STOP now. Find a different side dish. Do NOT go any further.

But I thought the cheese could overcome, so I proceeded. I cooked the brown rice. Then I mixed the “cream soup” with the rice, broccoli, and cheese. Put it in the oven to let it work itself out.

The good news is that I didn’t burn it.
The bad news is that I didn’t burn it!

And that concludes our good-bad-ugly feature for February. I’m totally skipping the story in which Ami ruins her Vitamix by trying to blend a metal spoon.